


down to gehenna

by sutlers



Category: Silent Hill, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Horror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-26
Updated: 2011-07-26
Packaged: 2017-10-21 19:25:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/228797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sutlers/pseuds/sutlers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Welcome back to Silent Hill, Erik Lehnsherr, we hope you enjoy your stay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	down to gehenna

**Author's Note:**

> It's a Silent Hill fusion, guys, and all that implies. Consider yourselves warned. [For the kink meme](http://1stclass-kink.livejournal.com/6084.html?thread=7659460#t7659460).

_.set honor in one eye and death in the other_

In Toluca County, West Virginia, Charles says, "Oh, let's stop here for the night," so Erik does. Their hotel overlooks a lake; in the morning the sunlight glints off the water in a thousand mirrored pieces, like a photograph he can't comprehend the entirety of, and wisps of fog curl around the tops of the hemlock trees.

"I like it here," Charles murmurs, sliding into Erik's space, still rumpled from sleep. His eyes are heavy and dark, not yet adjusted to the light. He tilts his head up and ghosts his fingers over his temple. "It's so quiet."

"Do the people here think particularly silently?" Erik asks, voice coming out rough.

Charles smiles. "We ought to come back some day."

 

***

Erik doesn't remember the fog being this bad; the air is thick with it, like trying to breathe underwater. Like drowning, Erik thinks, looking at himself in the mirror of the rest stop. Spiderweb cracks shoot across the glass, shattering his reflection, and the whole place smells of rust and stale urine. His car had shuddered to a stop half a mile down the road. He could have moved it, he supposed, but it didn't seem worth the effort. He touches his helmet. He can hear water in the distance.

>  _My dear friend,_
> 
>  _I don't know if you remember, but there was this little town where we spent the night, in West Virginia? It was called Silent Hill._

"Where are you, Charles," Erik mutters, striding back outside.

The path to the water leads him to a cemetery, rows of headstones that might have been neat once; now they sink into hungry, soft ground, skewed and largely illegible. There is no way to tell how many there are; the fog prevents Erik from seeing more than a half-dozen yards.

An old man materializes out of the mist, leaning against a headstone that is taller than the ones next to it. The name on it is completely worn away, but a raised shape beneath the old man's hand might once have been the profile of a face, generations ago. His eyes are closed. Erik hesitates.

"Grandfather," he says finally.

"Surely it hasn't been that long," the old man says. "Though I suppose it has." His eyes open and rest for a moment on Erik's helmet, but he makes no comment. Some long-forgotten sense of propriety prompts Erik to ask,

"Are you all right?"

"As well as can be expected," he says. "I was looking for an old friend. They told me he was buried here, but I can't find him."

Erik swallows around a sudden dryness in his throat and asks, "What is your name?"

"Magnus," the old man says after a pause. Erik takes a breath.

"Erik," Erik says. "I'm looking for—a town. Silent Hill."

"Mm." Magnus straightens and Erik sees that they're exactly of a height. Magnus's eyes are paler than his own, though, and he looks tired. "It's only about a mile from here, but you'll have to get back on the road and follow it west. You can't miss it; it's the only town."

"Thank you." Erik half-turns, intending to go back the way he came, but Magnus clears his throat.

"Do you play chess, boy?"

"I do," Erik says.

"I did, once," Magnus says. He looks off into the fog, eyes unfocused, distracted by some inner contemplation. "It's these infernal plastic pieces, they're too heavy." His hand shoots out and grips Erik's wrist hard enough to bruise. Erik jerks instinctively but can't free himself, and Magnus pries apart Erik's fingers, pushing something into Erik's palm. Lead, Erik thinks, and ... brass? He opens his hand; it's a pawn, blood-warm from being held so tightly.

"You won't find him," Magnus adds bitterly, and walks away.

 

***

The sign on the road says _Welcome to Silent Hill_ and a blurred shape beneath it resolves into a boy when Erik approaches. The boy looks up; his eyes are the startling green of spring growth and Erik wouldn't put him past eight, maybe nine years old. He has a stick and is using it to draw something in the dirt that might be a bird.

"Why are you wearing that thing?" he asks, pointing to his own head. "It looks stupid."

"What's your name?" Erik asks.

"What's yours?"

"Erik."

"Are you going in town?"

"Yes," Erik says. The boy nods, then bends back over the dirt, brow furrowed in concentration.

"That's where my mama is," he says casually after a few moments.

"Do you live here?" Erik asks.

"You shouldn't go, it's dangerous."

"Why?" Erik asks. The boy looks at him like he's being intentionally dense. "I'm ... meeting someone there. I have to find him."

"How are you going to hear him with that thing on?" the boy asks.

Erik tenses. "Hear who?"

"Mr. Charles."

"How do you know Charles?" Erik says, too loud. The boy's eyes widen and he tips over on his backside, then scrambles to his feet. "Are you a student of his? Where is he?"

"I don't like you," the boy says. He ducks behind the sign as Erik grabs for him and then he's gone, into the roiling gray, the only trace of him the faint patter of running footsteps. Erik bangs his fist into the sign, breathing hard, and looks down at the road. There's a thick smear of brown-red blood across it.

 

***

>  _My dear friend,_
> 
>  _I don't know if you remember, but there was this little town where we spent the night, in West Virginia? It was called Silent Hill. I think about it sometimes, more often lately. I think about you all the time._
> 
>  _I am there now._

The worst part of Charles's telepathy, Erik thinks, is that there was no way to tell when he was using it. When someone is groping around in your skull you should be able to feel it, or at least feel _something_ , a foreign presence, but there was nothing. Even when Charles spoke directly into his mind it always took a moment to identify the thought as extrinsic, generated elsewhere, and that had always been Erik's biggest fear: that he would stop being able to do so, that they would become too close, that Charles might rewrite him without even meaning to. Disquieted, Erik stares into the fog, where he can just make out the indistinct shapes of buildings.

"All right, Charles," he whispers, and takes the helmet off.

He places it carefully on the ground next to the drawing of the bird in the dirt. From this distance, he can see it is a heraldic eagle.

"For now," Erik says, then shouts at the top of his lungs: "Charles!"

 _Charles_ , the mountains say back to him in his own voice, but that is the only answer he gets.

"Fuck," Erik mutters, and closes his eyes, listening for a long moment. There are no sounds, just the eerie whistle of the wind and his own harsh breathing, the creak of metal and wood. He hasn't seen a bird since he crossed the county line.

The town has been abandoned. The edges of the road crumble beneath Erik's shoes and boards criss-cross the windows of most of the buildings. Signs for bars and grocery stores hang askew on rusty metal rods, filthy and warped. Erik passes a department store and sees a mannequin in the window wearing a tweed suit; something black scuttles across the display, too fast to see clearly, and up the mannequin's leg inside its trousers. Everything is coming to pieces, falling in on itself.

Next to the department store is an empty lot, cordoned off by a broken wooden fence. The grass is yellow, dead, and the blown out husk of a bulldozer sits below an uneven hill. Erik realizes he _is_ hearing something, like static on the radio or snow across the television. He covers his ears.

Tinnitus, he thinks, then _it's inside my head_ just as a shadow lurches upright at the top of the hill.

"Fuck," Erik says through a sharp slam of adrenaline. It has the pale, graying look of a decomposing body, streaked with blood, and it walks like its bones have been broken, dragging its legs over the ground. It doesn't have a face, just translucent skin stretched over places that should be its eyes and mouth, veins visible over a silent scream. It doesn't have any arms, either; or maybe it does, because something stretches the skin of its torso like someone trying to get out of a straitjacket.

Erik drops his hand open before he can even think about it and sends the pawn flying like a bullet, right through the creature's forehead. It moans, an agonized, muffled sound, but keeps coming; Erik rips the pawn through it again and again, where its lungs would be, through its skull until it's barely recognizable, and finally it staggers to its knees and curls in on itself.

"My God," Erik croaks, stumbling back.

He can still hear the static; something else is moving in the lot. Erik is suddenly sure that the hill is a pile of corpses. He starts running.

 

***

He doesn't know how long he runs before his head quiets. The buildings here are residential, apartments surrounded by wrought-iron gates. He leans against one, taking comfort in the feel of cold metal under his hands, and tries to slow his breathing to something approaching normal.

"You all right there, love?" someone asks. Erik jerks his head up.

"Charles," he says, even as he knows it isn't, because Charles is unfolding his legs and lifting himself off the stairs that lead to the front door of the apartment building. He sways a little as he makes his way down to the gate, a bottle of whiskey dangling from his fingers. He's wearing jeans that are too tight on him and a shirt that might have been black once but is now tending toward gray, holes in the hems where his hands peek out of the sleeves and a lopsided collar, like someone has been stretching the elastic to get at his neck. He hasn't shaved.

"Are you looking for someone?"

"You're not Charles," Erik says dumbly.

"Oh, darling, look at you, you're a right mess," Charles says, reaching up to touch Erik's hair where it's plastered to his skull by sweat. Erik lurches back.

"Don't touch me," he says, then puts lie to his own words by lunging through the gate and slamming Charles back against it, holding him by the throat. Charles wheezes and scrabbles at Erik's hand. "Is this a fucking trick, Charles? Who are you?"

"Charlie," he gasps. "My name is Charlie, you psychopath prick, let go of me!"

"Stop _looking_ like him," Erik snarls, wondering if this is someone like Mystique, or someone like Emma, or _Charles_ , is this whole fucking town an illusion? He shouldn't have left the helmet, he should have—

Charles is turning blue. Erik loosens his grip and he falls to the ground, then pushes away, half-crawling to get away from Erik. He's ... terrified, and he's trying to hide it by tucking his hands defensively under his elbows but he's shaking and his pupils are blown. Erik shakes his head.

"Charlie?" he says after a moment.

"Fucking right, my name's on the door and everything," Charlie says hoarsely, coughing.

"What door?" Erik says. Charlie twitches in the direction of the apartment building. "Show me."

"No, there is no bloody way I'm going back in there," Charlie says. "You can just fucking help yourself, though, be my guest." He takes a step back so he's leaning against the fence again and slides down it, wrapping his arms around his knees. What the fuck is going on here, Erik thinks, and climbs the steps across the threshold.

 

***

The mailboxes behind the desk have _Charlie_ on the third floor, name written in a careless, looping print that leans the wrong way. The desk is covered with dust or ... ash, Erik thinks, sniffing, noting the velvety way it smears across his fingers. The light bulb flickers.

 _Charlie_ is written in the same handwriting in the plaque beneath the peephole in the door. Erik passes his hand over the doorknob and feels tumblers fall into place. The door swings open silently, which is why they don't notice him right away.

"No, Max," Magnus says patiently. "The nature of a gambit is that you have to give up a piece in order to get a greater return."

Magnus and the boy from before—Max, Erik thinks—kneel on opposite ends of a coffee table in the middle of a room that looks like it's been through a hurricane, splintered furniture everywhere and broken glass strewn all over the floor. The chess board in between them only has maybe a third of its pieces: the pawns are buttons and the knights are pebbles, and the black king is a tin soldier.

"But—" Max says, then startles. " _You_ ," he says to Erik, and jumps up from the table and flees into another room, slamming the door behind himself.

"Wait," Erik says, dodging a broken couch.

"Terrorizing children again, Erik?" Magnus chuckles, before Erik wrenches open the door.

Ash coats the room, a layer at least a quarter of an inch thicker than in the halls and lobby. No footsteps mark anyone's passage and Max is nowhere to be seen; Erik swears and yanks open the closet anyway, then tries the window, rusted shut. He turns, wiping ashy hands on his forehead and notices the wheelchair, the bed for the first time. His stomach heaves.

A corpse lies on top of the the covers, hands crossed over its chest in the typical funeral fashion, dressed in a suit. It's covered in the same ash that covers the room, except for what's left of its head: that is splattered across the pillows and the headboard, glistening red and gray with pieces of brain matter and bone. Erik stumbles back out of the room and retches dryly.

"I said he was being a damn fool," Magnus says quietly when Erik stops. "You can't lock hatred like that away and pretend it doesn't exist. If you put a cage around it, it will just get angrier." Erik wipes his mouth and looks up; Magnus is placing the buttons and pebbles carefully inside the chess board. When he's done, he closes it and stands up. "I'm going to bed, I'm not as young as I used to be."

"There's a—" Erik croaks.

"I know what's in that bed, I've made it," Magnus snaps.

Now lie in it, Erik finishes for him. He needs to get out. "Where did he go?" he asks, not sure if he means Max or Charles.

"You know where he is, you put him there," Magnus says. He steps around Erik and into the room, leaving the door ajar. When Erik turns his head he sees Magnus pressing a kiss to the ruin of the corpse's skull, coming away with lips that glisten red. Static fills Erik's head again and a shape detaches itself from the shadows in the corner of the room; he doesn't stay long enough to see what it is.

 

***

"Right, what did I tell you," Charlie says when Erik slams his way out of the building. "Oi, where are you going?"

"The hospital," Erik says.

"Take me with you!" he says, then when Erik doesn't acknowledge him, "Do I look like Charles?"

Erik stumbles, then sits down hard on the sidewalk. His head is quiet again. After a small hesitation, Charlie sits down next to him. "Was he your boyfriend or something?" he asks. He sounds wistful.

"What?" Erik says. The silty taste of ash is still in his mouth.

"I've only seen people that psychotic over people they were in love with," Charlie says. "Or, um, people who killed their parents. So which one was it?"

Erik looks at him. The ghost of a smile flits over Charlie's lips and he ducks his head.

"Can you read my mind?" Erik asks. Charlie's eyebrow shoots up.

"Are you completely insane?"

"No, I," Erik starts. "No, you're not coming with me."

"Are you fucking—please," Charlie whispers, hand on Erik's arm. " _Please_. There's a dead bloke in my bed and this town is full of monsters, are you just going to leave me here like this?"

Erik closes his eyes, gritting his teeth around _I never wanted to_ , and asks instead, "How long has it been like this? The town."

"Oh," Charlie says. "Always."

 

***

 _.he has hidden his face from us (all our righteousness)_

"How long has Charles been dead?" Charlie asks, peering up at a fog-obscured street sign and tugging Erik left on Carroll Street.

"Charles isn't dead," Erik says.

"Oh," Charlie says. "Sorry, um, the way you looked, I thought. Sorry."

They pass the remains of a gas station, blown to pieces in an explosion that looks like it came from underground, and a strip club with blacked out windows and a piece of pipe through the chest of the image of the girl on the sign. The name of the club flickers in red neon beneath her.

"So what did he do, then?" Charlie asks. "That you're so bent about?"

"Shut your fucking mouth about Charles before I shut it for you," Erik says. Charlie holds his hands up and in the space of a second his body language goes from wary to ... something else, soft and vulnerable. His tongue darts out to wet his lips.

"That's a bit forward of you, love, we've only just met," he says. Erik flinches.

"Where is this hospital?"

"Here," Charlie says, pointing to the building. "Oh, hey, that's—Max! Oi, Max!" He waves.

Max glances back at them through a soot-smeared face and heaves at the door, disappearing inside. Erik takes a breath, uneasy. The hospital squats over the ground in a hulking concrete mass, with its chain link fence and broken windows. Two dead trees stand like sentinels on either side of the door, _Brookhaven_ stamped in the plaque above it, branches reaching down like the gnarled fingers of the Erl-king waiting to carry someone off to his death. He's never liked hospitals.

"I told him he shouldn't be wandering about by himself," Charlie says, exasperated. "We ought to go after him."

"Do you know him?" Erik asks, looking at Charlie sharply. But no, Max said Charles.

"We live, um," Charlie winces and the heel of his hand goes to his forehead. "His mother died a little while ago."

Erik clenches his fist. "I'm going inside."

Tile crunches under Erik's in the lobby, dim and deserted. The directory hangs next to the reception, one of those black boards with the white letters stuck to it, though the letters aren't white anymore. Most of them aren't there anymore either; Erik can make out a DR. KL██S SCH████ on the third floor, head of PS██H████Y. "Where would the records be," he mutters, before his attention is diverted by the clock on the wall, hands spinning slowly in opposite directions. It stops on 10:28, and looking at it feels like sand in Erik's eyes. He flicks his fingers at it but the hands don't move.

"Top floor," Charlie says. "Head's office."

"Did you work here?" Erik asks.

"We can take the elevator," Charlie says, pulling Erik over. He smiles brightly and presses the button for 3.

It can't work, Erik thinks, but it does, stirring with an agonized metallic groan. Erik presses his hands against the wall, hearing the clicking of the gears, trying to find a measure of composure from the safety of being cocooned in metal. He's managed to take four deep breaths when Charlie announces, overloud,

"Here we are," and the doors creak open with a ding.

The hallway looks like the inside of an abattoir. Erik tenses, but the blood streaking the walls and ceiling is old, dried brown and flaking. Places on the floor look like finger-marks, scrabbling to get away.

"Just here," Charlie says, slipping through a door before Erik can make his feet move.

He follows slowly, careful. The door is identical to the other ones in the hall, except for a deep splintered furrow like a knife slash, and the place where the name-plaque would have been is a darker square against the wood. It swings open to reveal an office with papers scattered all over, rusted file cabinet ajar. The papers are bloody too, and someone has written

COMMIT THEM  
WITH YOUR EYES OPEN  
OR NOT  
AT ALL

  
in blood on the wall behind the desk. Charlie sweeps some papers off a black leather couch and sits down on it, poking half-heartedly at some loose stuffing.

"Are you going to try to find Max?" Charlie asks as Erik toes through the records on the floor, scanning for names.

"I'm looking for Charles," Erik says. He shuffles through the desk, nothing, swallowing around a lump of frustration, and glances inside the file cabinets. They're nearly empty, except for—Erik drops to his knees in front of the last one, reaching into the back of it. Something slides across his hand but he grips the file he saw and yanks it out, feeling a surge of triumph when he sees XAVIER, CHARLES FRANCIS printed across the top.

"Was he in here, then? Poor sod," Charlie murmurs.

"What?" Erik says. AGE, the file says, 12 YEARS. COMMITTED: JULY 24, 1943. "What?" Erik whispers again. _Patient not responding to medication; more vigorous treatment regimen recommended._ Erik looks up, wildly, and sees that Charlie is lying back on the couch with an arm flung over his eyes. He struggles to his feet, file still in hand.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm having a lie-down, aren't I?" Charlie says irritably. "My back bloody hurts. And I'm drunk," he adds in afterthought. He lifts his arm off his eyes. "You look like you could use one yourself."

His body shifts again and all of a sudden his legs aren't sprawled open in exhaustion as much as they are sprawled open in invitation, loose and lewd, and his hand pats the leather next to him. Erik can see with such crystal clarity how it would go that he can't be sure it's not a vision, stripping off Charlie's shirt and marking Charlie's body with his teeth, blood and sweat running down the insides of Charlie's thighs as Erik fucks into him, Charlie twisting and wild underneath him, hissing encouragement, harder, darling, yes, do it, _destroy me_ when the letter opener on the desk slides between his ribs.

Erik shakes his head to clear it, his breathing ragged, half-hard in his pants. "Charles," he says. "No, I. I have to find Charles."

"All right," Charlie says, turning over. "Keep an eye out for Max, would you?"

 

***

The elevator shudders its way down to the second floor. There's no blood in the hall here, just dust and yellowing walls, cracks in the floors and cracks in the light fixtures that cast strange shadows. It smells like decay, damp and dark. Erik holds the record file across his chest with one arm, a particularly flimsy shield, and counts rooms.

The door to room 2413 is already open. Erik slows, listening. A soft, clear humming whispers through the air, a child's voice, and the rustle of clothing.

"Max," Erik says.

Max tenses, eyes darting around, but he has nowhere to run because Erik is blocking the door. He sweeps his toy soldiers off the dirty bed and into his pocket.

"Mr. Charles isn't here," he says.

"Do you know where he is?"

"Are you going to hurt him?"

Erik's throat closes. "I wouldn't."

Max doesn't say anything. Erik sees now that the bed is child-sized, stained in the middle, with thick leather cuffs strapped to the four corners.

"He was in the hospital with my mama," Max says. "He got hurt."

"You shouldn't be in here by yourself," Erik says. "It isn't safe."

"Maybe," Max says, sullen.

"Charlie is looking for you. He's worried."

"Is he here?" Max looks Erik full in the face for the first time, eyes wide. "I don't think he should be here."

"We should go," Erik says. After weighing his options and swallowing around the obstruction in his throat, he holds out his hand. "He's upstairs, we should go back up there and see him."

"Okay," Max says. He doesn't take Erik's hand, but he does pull at the file. Erik lets him have it and he sidles past, walking back in the direction of the elevator. Erik follows him for a half-dozen steps before Max stops, turning around.

"Wait," he says. "Mr. Charles left something for you."

Erik freezes. "Where?" he says, heart starting to pound.

"In the room," Max says, pointing. "By the bed."

Erik realizes his mistake as soon as he steps inside, but he doesn't turn in time to stop the door from slamming. "Max!" he shouts, shoving into it bodily and then with his powers, but something is pushing back. "Let me out, Max!"

"You killed her!" Max screams. "It was you! It was you!"

"Max!" Erik roars, his head full of static. He whirls, terrified, and sees blood climbing up the walls. They turn black it its wake, paint cracking and curling, and something behind the bed moans inhumanly, wet sounds overlaid with the grinding of metal across the floor.

It's in a wheelchair, God, it's fused to the wheelchair, no legs, the flesh below its torso clinging to mangled metal as it drags itself toward Erik by torn and bloody arms. The chair is warped, one wheel spinning uselessly in the air while the other scrapes the ground. Bandages cover the monster's eyes but its mouth moves, shaping what might have been words.

The surgical instruments are all porcelain but the rusted metal of the IV pole by the bed slaps into Erik's hands and he swings it around and down, into the monster's skull with a sick wet crack. He hits it again, and again, blood splattering his legs and shirt until there's nothing left of its head but a pulpy mess. Its hands stop moving, twitching one last time in Erik's direction. The IV pole drops from his nerveless fingers and when he backs into the door it swings open and he falls through.

 

***

"Charlie," Erik says hoarsely, shaking him. "Charlie, wake up."

"No, Cain," Charlie says, flinching awake and trying to scramble away. His eyes focus on Erik and his terror melts into an uncomplicated happiness, clear and bright. "You came back," he says.

 _You decided to stay_ , Erik thinks, and wonders if it would have been this easy. He tries to pull himself together but it feels like his mind has been packed in cotton.

"Charles wasn't in the room," Erik says.

"Oh," Charlie says, face falling. "Did you find Max?"

"He ran away again."

"Charles might be in the basement." Charlie tugs on the edges of his sleeves. "That's where they do most of the treatments. I feel better, I'll come too."

"All right," Erik says, helping him stand. Charlie leans into him briefly and lets Erik go through the door first.

His footsteps are quiet, an echo of Erik's own behind him. Erik listens to them as he walks to the elevator, and walks, and keeps walking; was the hallway always this long? It seems an age before he reaches the end of it, like trying to swim through a dream. The steps take on another echo. When Erik enters the elevator the doors start to slide swiftly shut and he jumps, jamming his hands between them.

Charlie screams and the static in Erik's head roars like the ocean, resonating with the roar of blood in his ears. Through the gap in the door he sees Charlie struggling in the grip of a monster, this one enormous, more than seven feet tall, man-shaped and wearing a bloody loincloth and an enormous rusted helmet that hides its face. Its arms flex thick and ropey with decayed-looking muscle and in one hand it holds a dagger, already filthy with blood, but not enough to obscure the _BLUT UND EHRE_ etched into its side.

"No!" Erik shouts, pushing, but the doors don't respond.

Another monster steps out from behind the first one, this one in a doctor's uniform. It tilts its head up curiously, watching Charlie jerk and reach for Erik, still screaming. Its head keeps tilting, twisting back at an impossible angle, until it is staring straight at Erik.

Then it smiles.

"Charlie!" Erik shouts, but it isn't working, nothing is working, the doors keep pushing back on his hands. The knife doesn't even tremble. The doctor holds up a fist.

 _one_

A twisted finger points to the ceiling.

"My God," Erik says.

 _two_

Another joins it.

"No, please, I can't, I can't," Erik says.

 _three_

The monster holding Charlie stabs the knife into his neck and wrenches it out in a spray of blood, Charlie's body going limp. The elevator doors shut in Erik's face.

He slams into them again and again, to the point of almost dislocating his own shoulder, until they open just as suddenly as they closed, spilling him back out into the hallway. Erik scrambles to his knees but the monsters and Charlie are nowhere to be seen, just a fresh red smear of blood superimposed on all the old.

"Fuck," Erik says, "fuck, I can't, fuck, fuck," pitching down the hallway and back into the office, where he yanks the desk drawers back open and pulls out the gun. It's a standard-issue Luger— _of course_ , of course—and it holds seven bullets, each one of which Erik loads carefully inside before heading back out for the elevator and the basement.

 

***

It takes much longer than it should for the elevator to descend. Erik braces his hand against the wall again, but there is no safety here. Terror thrums inside him, constant and low-grade, slithering through his veins and wrapping barbed wire around his heart. He doesn't even know when it began; it feels like he's been living with it his entire life. It's difficult to think clearly.

He winces when the doors finally open; he doesn't know what he was expecting but it wasn't this, this pristine white hallway, lit so brightly that he has to hold a hand over eyes adjusted to straining through the gloom.

Glass, he thinks when spots stop dancing in his vision, and plastic. The color of milk and water, opaque and translucent in turns, pieces locked together in a strange geometry that draws him forward. He feels his filth more acutely, the blood that is drying tacky in his clothing and the soot that smudges his face and hands. He wonders what such a place would be used for even as an answer blooms in his mind— _a prison_ —and he catches a glimpse of a dark form around the corner.

"Charlie," he says, stunned. It is, Charlie in his gray shirt and blue jeans perched on top of a transparent examination table; he hops down when he sees Erik and presses against the bars that separate them.

"You're alive," Erik says. The bars are glass, hard and unyielding. "I saw you die."

Charlie's eyebrows draw together. "What are you talking about, my friend?"

"Charles?" Erik says. Charlie flinches back.

"I'm not Charles," he says. "I'm not, I'm not." He tucks his hands under his elbows and turns his head away, mouthing the words under his breath, agitated.

"Charlie," Erik says, alarmed.

"I, said the fly, with my little eye," Charlie mutters, swaying, "I saw him die, but who killed Cock Robin?"

"Charlie, what happened upstairs?" Erik asks, as evenly as he is able. He fishes for Charlie's sleeve through the bars and catches it; Charlie looks at him again, eyes coming back into focus, wide and blue.

"I killed them all, didn't I?" he says. "They hurt me. They hurt us and I killed him too, I held him still while you extinguished all the lights in his head."

"I can't," Erik chokes, hand clenching involuntarily. "I don't understand."

"I'm not Charles but I can be your Charles, Erik, please, please," Charlie says urgently. "Let me out." He hooks his hand around Erik's neck and pulls Erik into a kiss, the softness of his lips at odds with the tension of his body and the acrid taste of fear in his mouth.

"How did you get in here?" Erik whispers, their lips brushing together when he speaks.

"Please," Charlie says.

"I can't," Erik says. He pulls his head away but keeps his grip on Charlie's arm. The bars connect to the ceiling and floor seamlessly. "I'll find another way inside."

"No, don't," Charlie mumbles. He curls his fist in Erik's shirt but he already sounds defeated, hopeless. "Don't leave, please."

"I'll find another way inside," Erik says. He uncurls Charlie's hand and squeezes it. "I came back once, didn't I?"

"All right," Charlie says, small and watery. Erik bends to kiss him again; he can't stop himself, and tries to put the promise into it. Charlie sighs, a warm puff of air.

"Erik, listen to me," he says.

"Charlie—"

"No, Erik, _listen_ —" His grip on Erik's hand tightens; then he lets go. "You have to find Max. You have to, he's all alone and I'm responsible for him now, _please_ —"

"All right, all right," Erik says, closing his eyes and picking a direction, starting to run.

 

***

It is a labyrinth: every turn brings more white, more of the same. There's no logic to Erik's choices—left, right, left, always forward—but he suspects it doesn't matter; this place will lead him where it wants him to go.

He eventually realizes he is moving in a spiral, steadily closer to the center of something. The uniformity of the hallways begins to break up: every hundred feet or so the wall is replaced by an enormous pane of glass, like a one-way mirror into an interrogation room, or Schmidt's—Shaw's office. He passes a room full of surgical instruments, the table in the middle cut with deep recesses on four sides to catch the runoff; one with seven showerheads bolted to the ceiling and no drain; one with morgue-sized doors cut into the walls; one filled with abandoned shoes and another with human hair, all a dusty uniform shade of gray.

The last one has a man in it, or at least a man-shaped thing, white with no arms, and Erik backs against the wall and cocks the gun before he dares look around the corner again, remembering the first monster and the pile of corpses.

"Have you seen the girl with fire in her hair?" Magnus says, voice echoing hollowly. Erik takes several short breaths, listening to the quiet in his mind, and rounds the corner with the gun raised. Magnus studies it with the same lack of expression he had in the graveyard for Erik's helmet, then his eyes lift to Erik's face.

"Who put you here?" Erik asks, training the gun on the door behind Magnus. As he inches closer, he sees that this room has no pane separating it from the hall. Magnus sits at a table behind a chessboard made of the same thick, heavy glass as everything else, playing against no one, pale pieces nearing endgame. He is wearing a straitjacket.

"My pride put me here," he says. "In that respect, at least, we were always the same."

"What girl?" Erik asks.

"She was the last one we found together, but it was too late. They hated her already, so she hated them in return. Did you know," Magnus says, leaning forward, gaze shrewd. "That hatred is the phoenix, burning the world to ash? I'd forgotten that the only thing that rises from it is the bird itself."

"I don't—"

"Because you are blind, deaf, and willfully ignorant," Magnus says, but there is no venom in his voice, just bewilderment. He cocks his head, as if listening.

After a moment, when nothing else is forthcoming, Erik says, "Let me get you out of this." He pulls the straps binding Magnus's arms back and they come undone, Magnus's hands falling limp by his sides. Magnus straightens his spine.

"Ah, here comes the colonel with my medicine," he says quietly. "It makes me say the strangest things."

Erik tenses, because now he hears it too, the static in his head and the thump-drag of something behind the door. He stops trying to help Magnus stand and picks up the gun again, willing his hands into steadiness. The door creaks open slowly, dead fingers questing around the edge.

Erik's first two shots go wide—he hasn't used a gun in a long time but he doesn't remember ever being quite so bad at it—but the third wings the doctor in the shoulder. It drops a rectangle wrapped in white paper on the floor and Erik backs into the chessboard unthinkingly, upending it, pieces scattering like marbles.

The fourth shot goes through the monster's forehead, splattering blood on the wall, and it folds to the ground screaming, still with the rictus of a smile on its face. It keeps screaming, low and inhuman, until Erik takes the chessboard and bashes the corner of it into its mouth. Breathing hard, Erik staggers and Magnus puts a hand on his elbow.

"My boy," he says, lifting the chessboard away and placing it back on the table, "you are only putting off the inevitable."

He bends to start collecting the pieces and placing them back in formation, smearing through the blood. In his hunt for them, he steps on the rectangle and it cracks with a dull, muffled sound. The rich scent of chocolate permeates the air. Erik watches him for a while, then steps into the darkness beyond the door.

 

***

Part of him already knows what he's going to see, but the vivid shock of red spreading from underneath Charlie's body still brings Erik to his knees. The wound in Charlie's neck is deep, ragged and bloody around the edges, and his corpse looks small and defenseless.

"Please, Charles," Erik whispers. His breathing is loud in the silence. "Help me."

No one answers. There is a familiar key in Charlie's hand, and Erik takes it from his cold, still fingers, folding it into his own.

 

***

 _.the only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life_

>  _My dear friend,_
> 
>  _I don't know if you remember, but there was this little town where we spent the night, in West Virginia? It was called Silent Hill. I think about it sometimes, more often lately. I think about you all the time._
> 
>  _I am there now. Please, if there is any part of you that still loves me, come find me._

Charles had told him that the Lakeside Hotel used to be a house, more than a decade ago, before new owners remodeled it and opened it for guests. Erik had answered that he had no use for worthless historical trivia and plucked the brochure from Charles' hands, holding it over his head while Charles abandoned his dignity and jumped for it. Now the hotel rises from the gloom, and Erik realizes that he has seen the numbers on the address before: in the medical file, lost to Max in the hospital.

The front doors swing open and the fog has found its way inside, creeping on quiet cat feet across the floors, over the marble and rich brocade faded with age, curling around the edges of the reception desk. The ferns Erik remembers spilling lushly over the sides of it have died, resting delicate and brittle in their containers, leaves crumbling at the touch of his fingers. Something shifts by the stairs, and one of the empty suits of armor guarding the banister clatters to the ground.

Erik jerks the gun up, heart racing, but it's only Max, cringing in the corner where suit of armor used to stand.

"I'm sorry!" he yelps, trying to make himself smaller. "Don't shoot!"

Erik exhales, then puts the gun away, holding out his hands so that Max can see they're empty. "I'm not going to shoot you."

Max peeks through the cage of his arms.

"I'm sorry for," Erik pauses. "Yelling at you. By the sign."

"Have you found Mr. Charles yet?" Max asks. "Is he here? He's here, isn't he. His name was here."

"I haven't—" The words catch in Erik's throat. "Not yet."

"What if you don't?" Max asks, standing. Erik sits down on the stairs and puts his head in his hands, raking his fingers through hair matted with sweat and he doesn't care to know what else. "You've been looking for a long time."

"Yes," Erik says unsteadily.

"Me too," Max says. "I'm tired of walking." Erik doesn't say anything and Max scrubs a hand over his nose, sniffing. "I miss my mama," he says in a tiny, wavering voice.

"Me too," Erik whispers. A flurry of movement and he suddenly finds himself with an armful of little boy. The impact jars his spine painfully into the stairs.

Max's thin shoulders shake with suppressed sobs and the front of Erik's shirt grows hot and damp with tears. Carefully, without dislodging him, Erik shifts them both so that Max is curled up in Erik's lap, his hair soft and fine against Erik's cheek.

"I'm sorry," Max says, muffled, when his shuddering finally slows. "I know you didn't do it. I shouldn't have locked you in there."

"That's all right," Erik says.

"I can't find Mr. Charles either. Mama said he would take care of me."

"I'll find him," Erik says. He sets Max down and stands, but Max's hands are still tangled in the hem of his shirt and he follows when Erik walks back over to the reception desk and takes the pad of paper and pen in hand. It takes a little while to get the pen to write, but finally black ink follows its path on the paper and Erik flips to a new page and writes an address down. He tears that off and hands it to Max.

"You're pretty resourceful, right?" he asks quietly. Max takes the paper from him and looks at it. He nods. "Do you think you can get to New York?"

Max nods again, but slower.

"You can read addresses?"

"I read the one here," Max says, the beginnings of panic pitching his voice high. Erik puts a hand on his head.

"I want you to find this one," Erik says, folding Max's fingers around the paper with his other hand. "You'll be safe there. I'll meet you there with Mr. Charles when I find him."

"Where are you going?" Max asks. He's crying again. "I want to go with you."

"You shouldn't follow me," Erik says, backing up a step. "You should get out." Max stays rooted on the spot, knuckles almost as white as the paper. Erik takes a shaky breath and starts climbing the stairs.

 

***

The key unlocks the door to their room smoothly, but as soon as it opens Erik gags, covering his mouth and nose with the collar of his shirt. It smells overwhelmingly of gasoline. "Charles?" Erik coughs, because there is a figure seated in front of the television, watching grainy news footage, which is all he can make out through the watering of his eyes. He wipes the tears away.

"Magnus," he says, vision clearing. Magnus doesn't acknowledge him, catatonic in front of the screen. The screams of the people being videotaped are muted and tinny; someone catapults something enormous, car-sized and on fire, into a cluster of them and it explodes. "Has Charles been in here?"

"Watch," Magnus says. The carpet is wet, oily, reflecting the light from the television in a spectrum of color; the bedspread is similarly soaked. Magnus holds a matchbook in his hand.

"Magnus," Erik says, backing up a step.

" _Watch,_ " Magnus repeats, and Erik's movements halt, eyes drawn reluctantly to the television again. A wind begins to whip around the crowd of people on the screen; Erik can see hair fluttering, clothes. Some of them are soldiers, in uniform, most of them are not, children in with dark eyes and too-tight clothing. Fires burn in front of some sort of facility, and everyone is trying to run. He doesn't understand.

"Checkmate," Magnus says, as the people lift into the air and disintegrate into clouds of ash, pulled apart by the howling wind. Something hits Erik's chest, four sharp pinpricks, and he gasps. He catches himself on Magnus's chair and clutches at the pain, but there's nothing there.

The rasp of the match galvanizes Erik into movement again and he struggles upright. The flame in Magnus's hand burns brightly, eagerly in the gasoline-saturated air, and the picture of the television jerks and turns into static. "It's only fitting," Magnus says. He flicks the match onto the bed. "Look outside."

 

***

Max isn't in the lobby when Erik limps through. A small mercy, he thinks, mind full of the swift liquid spread of the flames over the floor, lapping around Magnus's legs in the chair before catching. He can see the fire outside, one window brighter than all the others, and then the glass explodes and the flames roar free in the foggy air, burning moisture away and replacing it with smoke that is just as impenetrable.

Erik sags against the railing overlooking the lake, watching the fire. He feels his memories beginning to unspool and burn away: drowning in black water, caught between two implacable forces; breathing the humid night air in Virginia; feeling the cold ground on his elbows and knees in Russia, the smell of mossy peat and blood; sand between his fingers and triumph singing through his veins, horror, endless horror. Would it have been different, he wonders, if I had kissed you earlier? A thousand moments where he'd wanted to, Charles with red lips and sleepy eyes, face tilted into the morning light as the sun's rays slipped into their hotel room.

"Erik," Charles says.

"Charles," Erik says. He doesn't remember closing his eyes. The railing he grips is giving him a sense of déjà vu, in front of this enormous house. Charles' face twists.

"For fuck's sake, can't you tell us apart yet?" Charlie spits. He's wearing Charles' suit, and he's shaved. Erik winces.

"Please," he says, not sure what he is asking for anymore.

"All you have to do is ask," Charlie says. "I told you, didn't I? I can be your Charles."

"That's not what I want," Erik says.

"Why the bloody hell not?" Charlie's hand shoves into Erik's chest and Erik would have staggered back if he weren't already leaning against the railing. "I'm exactly what you want! We can leave here together! I'll follow you forever, because you're right, you've always been right, I know what—"

"That won't happen," Erik says, catching Charlie's hands.

"I'm trying to give you a second chance, you stubborn son of a bitch."

Charlie wrenches free, stepping backwards into the fog. He manages two steps before he stiffens, mouth falling open, soundless. A knife protrudes from his navel. Erik blinks at it, uncomprehending.

The monster twists it pulling it out and Charlie's legs fold like someone cut the puppet strings, collapsing to his knees as Erik fumbles for the gun and puts his last three shots in the monster's chest.

There was no warning, he thinks, no warning static in his head and for the first time he feels completely alone, lost, trapped. The monster behind Charlie falls too, hands scrabbling at the bloody holes over its heart, a grotesquely human gesture. When its rusty helmet hits the cobblestones the sound echoes clear and low like a skellet bell, a crack appearing on one side, but not wide enough to reveal the identity of the face inside.

"I didn't want this either," Erik says hopelessly, dropping to his knees beside Charlie, helping Charlie brace himself on his hands. "I can't stop it."

"Of course not," Charlie gasps, face screwed up with pain. "It has already been done."

He pulls the empty gun from Erik's unresisting hands. It isn't a Luger, Erik notes with a strange lack of surprise. Something plinks out of his pocket and onto the ground, rolling over; Charlie picks that up too, the pawn from the graveyard. Nestled in his palm, the metal twists back into its original shape and Charlie loads it into the magazine with a rattling click, his hands shaking. His chest spasms and a thin trail of blood dribbles out of his mouth.

"You should ask yourself," Charlie coughs. He takes several wet breaths before he can continue. "What was it that brought you here?"

The letter, Erik thinks, then _I see_. He helps Charlie lift the gun so the muzzle makes a hot circle on his forehead. He wraps both of his hands around Charlie's to steady them and means to say nothing, but finds himself speaking anyway, predetermined, like lines from a play:

"I can deflect the bullet."

Charlie's face softens and in that moment he looks so much like Charles that Erik—

"No, my friend, you cannot," he says gently, and fires.

 

***

>  _I am so lost without you,_
> 
>  _Charles._

 **in the end**

 _.i have become a burden to myself_

but then you shatter me with dreams  
and terrify me with visions

if i have sinned  
what have i done to you?

 

 

 

 

______________________________________________

And, as a special treat for those of you who have played all the way through, THE ALTERNATE ENDING:

> Erik trips, falling through a hole in the ground. There is another door in front of him and when he opens it he sees Hairy Go-fuck-yourself from the bar, cigar dangling from his mouth while he pushes levers in front of an enormous screen with Charles and Erik's faces superimposed on a map. Erik falls to his knees.
> 
> "Omae no ... shiwaza datta no ka!" Erik cries.
> 
> Go-fuck-yourself shrugs philosophically. "Sorry. I lived in Japan for like ten years, that shit fucks you up."

GAME OVER.

OR IS IT?

> Erik jerks with the shot, and sees he's behind the wheel of a car. Charles sits next to him in the passenger seat, looking concerned.
> 
> "You're falling asleep at the wheel, my friend, maybe we should stop here for the night," he says, gesturing to the fog-obscured sign that says _Welcome to Silent Hill_.
> 
> "Absolutely the fuck not," Erik says, gunning it.
> 
> They make it all the way to Pennsylvania before they stop, checking into a Motel 6. Erik stares out the window and pretends Charles isn't peering at him with ill-concealed curiosity. He clears his throat. "Where is the next mutant we're looking for?"
> 
> "Oh, um, Maine," Charles says, running his finger down a piece of paper. "A town called Derry?"

JUST KIDDING.


End file.
